In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads—in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. — Jacques Barzun

Archive for January, 2010

Conservatives in Texas aren’t an endangered species, but, in this part of Texas, they’re relatively rare. And, as you’ve no doubt noticed, I’ve been busy enough to have trouble posting consistently at certain times. So, I’ve invited another Texas conservative, author of the blog Quid Nimis, to join forces with me. Thanks, Barb! “Double the pleasure… double the fun!”

Glenn Reynolds on the stimulus package: “This is not so much a stimulus, as a massive transfer of wealth from the politically unconnected to the politically connected.” I think that’s exactly right. I noticed back in the 1980s that the Democratic party devoted itself primarily to exactly that kind of transfer. The rhetoric about asking the “haves” to invest in the “have-nots” for the sake of the future is only rhetoric. Since the politically connected are generally more affluent than the average American, Democratic policies, however they are sold, end up mostly transferring wealth upward, from the average person with no particular political clout to people who have political influence. Those people in turn contribute money to keep the Democrats in power and the upward transfers continuing. That’s what I meant a few weeks ago in saying that the Democratic party is essentially a criminal enterprise. It is essentially a scheme for expropriating the wealth of the average person and giving it to the politically connected and favored. This used to be called ‘theft.’

People don’t tend to notice this when the amounts being stolen are relatively small. The stimulus package, Obamacare, and the possibility of cap-and-trade, however,are massive programs that have already quadrupled the deficit and threaten, if enacted, to do far worse. Steal a few dollars, and most people don’t notice. Steal a few trillion dollars, and they start screaming at you.

The logrolling shows exactly how key details of everyone’s coverage will be subject to constant politicking.

This is what’s revealing about the turn of the Obamacare debate toward revenue: We see that the House and Senate plans are really about how to redistribute the costs of health care. The plans avoid anything like patients assuming responsibility and control of their own care – the one thing that could restrain costs. Instead, Congress hustles more money to and fro in the name of fairness, politically determined.

So people assume, correctly, that the cost will fall on those with the least political juice. That’s why middle-class people were shouting at Feingold this week. They aren’t poor and sympathetic. They aren’t rich enough to hire sharp tax lawyers. They aren’t doctors who hire lobbyists; they aren’t unions, owning lawmakers. Someone’s going to get milked, and they sense a bucket headed their way.

The patsies are indeed catching on, not only to Obamacare, but to the essence of the Democratic party: to transfer money and power from you to them. It’s that simple. All the rest is a con, a fog created to obscure that essence and convince you that it’s noble for you to give what you have to them.

On Monday, at Phoenix’s Big Sky Airport, one such episode occurred. About 45 minutes before Southwest Airlines flight 3056 to Austin was scheduled to depart, a Muslim woman dressed in a burka passed by the gate pushing a janitor’s cart. Two or three minutes later, two security officials came to occupy a position at one end of the gate. Moments later, two others appeared at the other end of the gate. Both pairs chatted and tried to appear casual, but were examining the gate area, watching for something suspicious. A minute later, the gate agent announced that it was time to board, and rushed through the instructions. An officer went over to those in line to board, asked each person for ID, and studied the IDs and faces carefully with a UV light to verify the IDs’ authenticity. As soon as IDs were checked, people were rushed onto the plane. The flight was oversold, and people were offered $300 vouchers to deplane. The plane sat at the gate for 10 minutes, and then taxied slowly to the runway. The flight continued without incident. Passengers were unusually talkative, as if to release tension.

I haven’t been able find out what prompted this. I wonder how many other security incidents have occurred since the Christmas bombing attempt that we haven’t heard anything about? Apparently there have been many. ABC News opines, “This is just the latest in a string of panicked calls to police over incidents on planes that turned out to be nothing.” Maybe they really are nothing. Maybe people are being hypercautious. Maybe these are attempts to probe the system. Or maybe they’re intended to get people to stop being so careful, by generating a “boy-crying-wolf” reaction.

Just when the nightmares of ’80’s PC crapola were beginning to recede (only to be replaced by a superfluity of more current crapola) the spectre of Ebonics has reared its ugly head. Or more accurately, Harry Reid reared his and dared to point out the obvious: Barack the Bi-lingual is a huge improvement over Jesse the Bro-lingual.

I’m with Steve Hayes (“It’s just weird to hear anyone say ‘Negro dialect'”) and Ward Connerly, the King of Crap-Cutting (“…I can tell in probably 90% of the cases whether an individual is black merely by talking to him on the telephone.”)

As for the “light skinned” comment, how about “light and thin”? Not 3 days ago, I saw a picture of our president with Charlie Crist and thought, “Rule of thumb: if your fake-bake makes you darker than the president, you need to cut your oven time.” In Charlie Crist’s case, I volunteer to stick a toothpick in him to see if he’s done. A really big toothpick.

As if by magic, Jesse Jackson was on cue with a timely new coinage: “bankster.” You know, a predatory lender. Excellent!

And the dumbest response to the Harry Reid Dialectic? Envelope, please…. Barack Obama!

“This is a good man who has always been on the right side of history. For him to have used some inartful language in trying to praise me and for people to try and make hay out of that makes absolutely no sense.”

The “right side of history” was a tired cliche when George Clooney bandied it around in 2004 stumping for John Kerry, but history caught up with Harry in 2007 in record time: no sooner had he uttered the words, “The war is lost” in Iraq, than the tide turned. Little trip down memory lane…

[Many thanks to Philo for inviting me to be a contributor to The View- Beeb]

Alternative title: Why “Eeuw” is the Appropriate Response.

The instances of gender-bending fawning by the media over the president are too numerous to count at this point. During the campaign, we had to deal with thrills going up legs, Tim Geithner’s reportedly mutual presidential man-crush, and an erstwhile sports writer gushing about the First Pecs. Endless virtual ink spilled about “cool” has become paradoxically commonplace. Maureen Dowd, in what has to be a serious bout of chemical imbalance (too much Scotch is my diagnosis) blurs-blends-bends the professional-sexual lines further by conflating Obama’s relationship with his Secretary of State with her relationship with her husband. Ugh, a thousand times, ugh.

Finally, or unfortunately, not finally, today we read in NYT that Obama jokes “lovingly” about Peter Orszag, who seems to have enough problems with romantic entanglements and wayward sperm without adding the gooey, inappropriate affections of Ripped Chest-in-Chief to the mix.

All of this is creepy first and foremost because it is indicative of the MSM’s headlong swan-dive into unprofessional and nonobjective coverage of the president and politics. Yes, they are in the tank for Obama: that is not news. What is truly unnerving, however, is the normalization, the cool-ization of an inappropriate confluence of professional and personal affections, and the easy transference of language that would normally characterize romantic relationships to relationships that have to be professional.

To understand what is at work here is the under-publicized yearning of the Left to erase boundaries across the sexual spectrum. In Barack Obama they see someone who skirts the edge of metrosexuality, who can be the object of masculine fantasy, even among putative heterosexuals. Among those familiar with the sexual agenda of the Left, Obama sports some interesting bona fides: as an adolescent, his Marxist-Leninist mentor “Frank” was Frank Marshall Davis, a prodigious sexual “experimenter” whose autobiography is described as “hard-core pornographic.” For normal people, exposing a youngster to such a man is a repulsive idea; to the agendized Left, steeped in the doctrine of Freud and Lenin, it is a service, if you’ll pardon the expression. In Obama’s case, the evidence of his autobiography suggests that the motivation of his grandfather, Stanley, to encourage a relationship (platonic, one assumes and hopes) was entirely naive and based on race. Nevertheless, among radicals, Marshall’s name carries considerable caché. Obama makes no bones about the political initiation he received from “Frank.”

Unfortunately, in this administration, one doesn’t have to dig deep to see this agenda at work. The ridiculous “man crush” vocabulary of the mainstream media would be a laughable parody if it weren’t at the service of an agenda to break down social norms and harm children. Ultimately, of course, the whole reason for “sexual liberation” isn’t to rid us of neuroses and usher in a world of obedience to unfettered urges, it’s to erode our strongest interpersonal bonds and the family, the relationship that more than any other, reduces dependency on the state and ensures personal freedom.

More immediately, it should be disturbing if indeed various relationships between the president and his advisors are tinged with emotions more appropriate to hormone-addled teenaged girls. That the press and “insiders” thinks it’s cute or appropriate or attractive to paint this picture is yet another sign of misplaced and unserious priorities.

This week a dead body was found on campus. The campus police suspected foul play, so they immediately called in a team of five highly trained … janitors! That’s how to deal with a suspected crime scene: clean it up!

They eventually called in the city homicide unit, who quickly concluded that the death was from natural causes.